as theatre, ‘by way of a singular intermediary … by way of Death’, a sensational sequence of manipulated images: from nineteenth-century tableaux vivants to Eadweard Muybridge’s calibrated human graphs and Julia Margaret Cameron’s angelic children, bedecked with wings and suspended in amniotic fluid, innocent emblems of infant mortality at the beginning of life. With the aid of muslin, montage and double exposure, the spirit photographers created equally convincing, equally fantastical visions of life after death. The final irony is that spiritualism invested its faith in such evidence, for the passing of time would ensure that these images undermined the movement more comprehensively than any amount of improbable table-tapping or levitating chairs.
The powerfully eclectic editorial stance of Human Nature was to provide a natural platform, and excellent publicity, for Frederick Evans, while James Burns was keen to promote Shakerism for his own ends. This earthly alliance suited their spiritual ambitions – a vivid example of the cross-pollination of utopian belief between England and America. Evans and Burns were as much prophets of their age as their more colourful antecedents – and they had the added benefit of new media. Cheap publishing, burgeoning literacy and photographic reproduction allowed spiritualism to be widely disseminated via the self-promoting identities of its practitioners, feeding on a trend which was even more evident: the American genius for self-invention, and an attendant sense of glamour. Thus the meeting of Evans – the intellectual embodiment of American Shakerism – and Burns – the motivating force of British Spiritualism – was an enormously potent encounter. Yet behind these men lay two female spirits; and just as the progenitor of their meeting was Ann Lee, so Mary Ann Girling would be its progeny.
That summer of 1871, as Mary Ann was making preparations for her mission to London, Evans and Peebles left New York on the new White Star liner, S.S. Atlantic. ‘The whole ship is under the influence of Shakerism to some extent,’ Evans told his fellow elders. Turning the voyage into an extension of his mission, he used an onboard accident – when a cannon exploded during the Independence Day celebrations and blew off a seaman’s arms – as an endorsement of Shaker pacifism, and persuaded the captain to have the fireworks thrown overboard: ‘Thus we preached non-resistance and non-powder-explosions, at the same time, on the 4th of July.’ A week later, Evans arrived in London and set up his office at the Progressive Library and Spiritual Institution at 15 Southampton Row. In the ‘dark little shop’, Evans was ‘crowded with letters, papers, books, visitors, inquiries, and deputations of various kinds’, while Burns took the opportunity to make a phrenological examination of his guest, as ‘we have seen only one Shaker’. It was as if the sect were an exotic tribe from some remote corner of the Empire: Burns advertised copies of Evans’ photograph and ‘stereoscopic views of groups of Shakers and their houses and gardens, all of which afford valuable data to the student of human nature’.
Elder Frederick Evans
Evans’ arrival also stirred up considerable interest among men such as the Honourable Auberon Herbert, Liberal Member of Parliament for Nottingham, with whom Evans and Peebles breakfasted at 11 o’clock (an hour which shocked Evans, who broke his fast around dawn). Their interview was ‘most interesting and profitable’, wrote Peebles. ‘Elder Frederick expounded to him the principles of Shakerism. He was deeply interested – pricked in the heart; and, upon some points at least, convicted.’ That afternoon, Herbert took both men into the House of Commons, where Evans ‘preached the Gospel of Progress and Reform’. ‘Many in this English speaking nation are almost ready for the harvest,’ declared Peebles. ‘They feel that something must be done … many are inquiring the way to Zion, and asking, What shall I do to be saved … England is ripening up rapidly for the forming of Shaker Societies.’ And Evans was determined to reap the benefit. Invited by Herbert to ‘splendid rooms’ to address a ‘fashionable gathering’ (‘some of the women not dressed as they ought to be, for modest women’), he was subjected to cross examination by lawyers, doctors and secretaries for nearly three hours.
But this mission was not to be limited to the professional classes. Evans’ lectures at Cleveland Hall proved so popular that they soon required a larger venue, as The Times announced on 3 August:
Elder Frederick W. Evans, of Mount Lebanon, State of New York, USA, will discourse on the principles of his order next Sunday, at the St George’s Hall, Langham Place, Regent St. Mr Hepworth Dixon, author of New America, will take the chair, supported by Mr Auberon Herbert, MP, and other Members of Parliament.
William Hepworth Dixon had recently published his first-hand account of American sects; as a guest of Evans and Eldress Antoinette Dolittle at Mount Lebanon, he had been struck by the ‘singular beauty and perfect success’ of the Shaker way of life, and his book was evidently The Times’ source of information. ‘The order of Shakers has been in existence for nearly 100 years … They are celibates, hold property in common like Primitive Christians, are free-thinking Spiritualists, and firm believers in present Divine inspiration. They neither manufacture nor use intoxicating drink, and they entertain peace principles. They have solved those vexed problems, war, intemperance, poverty, the social evil [prostitution], and crime, with all its concommittants of police-courts, gaols, and such like.’
The paper also reported positively on Evans’ lecture itself:
SHANKAR LADY.
The proceedings were commenced with a hymn, ‘The Day is Breaking’, and a short prayer, after which Mr Hepworth Dixon introduced ‘Elder Frederick’ to the meeting with a few words expressive of the pleasure which he had felt some years ago in visiting Mount Ephraim [sic], and seeing with his own eyes the well-ordered community of the Shakers, and the peace, contentment, plenty, and morality which reigned among them, where they had ‘made the desert smile’.
Such a life must have seemed attractive to many readers caught up in their quotidian duties. Cheered regularly throughout his speech, Evans warned ‘that both England as a country and London as a great city had need to reform their social code and habits of life’, and ‘that other empires and cities as large and as powerful … had perished by the sword …’ Privately, he discerned a ‘desperate, drugged determination … to do or die’ in that ‘great Babel of a city of 3½ millions of human bodies, supposed to have souls in them’, and where he felt like a ‘pilgrim and a stranger’. ‘The poor breed like rabbits; and, when the boys are old enough, the Government takes them as soldiers. But labor is so cheap, they are willing to be shot at, if they can get food to eat … This city, and all great cities, rest upon volcanoes liable to eruption at [a] time when least to be looked for or expected.’ Such observations were redolent of the Communist Manifesto. ‘This Government is wise, with all its wickedness. It watches sharply the signs of popular uprising, and yields to the demands of the great middle class, so as to propitiate them …’ While he noted that five thousand a day were dying in the siege of Paris, Evans claimed that ‘Communism is the greatest good that thousands can see in the future; and the fact that the Shakers make it a practical thing, a success,